The United Nations has warned that time is running out to reach the besieged Yemeni city of Taiz, where more than 800,000 people have been cut off from humanitarian aid after a month of encirclement by Houthi forces.
The UN’s relief chief, Tom Fletcher, said on Monday that all roads into the city were closed and essential supplies were running out. “We have food and medicines ready to move, but the roads must be opened by the parties and those supplies must be let in as soon as possible,” he said. “Civilians must not be held hostage to the conflict.”
The siege began in early October, after Houthi advances through the countryside around Taiz, and has cut the main road linking the city to Aden, the interim capital of Yemen’s internationally recognised government. Water production in the city has fallen by half, food prices have risen by at least 50 per cent, and 12 hospitals are at risk of closing or cutting services for lack of fuel and critical supplies. The UN says nearly a quarter of a million people in the city have lost access to essential health care, including more than 186,000 children under five and 23,000 pregnant women.
The health system is closest to breaking. The UN Population Fund warned on Tuesday that more than 13,000 pregnant women in Taiz have been left without essential care, and that the city’s main maternity hospital could be forced to suspend operations within days. Daily births there have fallen from around 10 to around five. Of the 27 hospitals designated to provide emergency maternal and newborn care in the area, only five are still operating, and only partially.
World Health Organization data puts the wider toll of the latest escalation at 1,677 people killed and 7,395 injured. In Taiz governorate, 42 health facilities face closure within days as medicines, oxygen and equipment run out. At the Republican Hospital’s dialysis centre, staff have been forced to cut treatment sessions from four hours to two and a half, and the governorate’s health office has warned that 1,110 kidney patients could be endangered if supplies do not get through. UN screenings have found more than 52,000 children in Taiz acutely malnourished, around 11,500 of them severely.
Nearly 300,000 people have been forced from their homes across Yemen since August, according to the UN, and the World Food Programme says more than 800,000 people in Taiz and nearby areas have been cut off from food aid since early October. About half of those displaced have taken refuge in Taiz itself, the city where the fighting is now concentrated.
Yemen has been engulfed in conflict since the Houthis seized the capital, Sanaa, and several other provinces in 2014, prompting a Saudi-led coalition to intervene in 2015. A UN-brokered truce collapsed in July, and government forces have since pressed a counteroffensive, backed by the Saudi-led coalition, to recapture Houthi-held territory. Battlefield casualty claims made by either side in the fighting have not been independently verified.
Sources: UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) — statement by Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher, 3 November 2026 (https://asiapost.in/un-relief-chief-demands-urgent-aid-access-after-yemens-taiz-city-cut-off-by-fighting/); UN Population Fund warning on maternal health in Taiz, 4 November 2026 (https://worldhealthcarereport.com/article/954447540-un-warns-thousands-of-pregnant-women-face-healthcare-shortages-in-yemen); World Health Organization casualty and health-facility data (https://www.yemenmonitor.com/en/Details/ArtMID/908/ArticleID/186381); Al Jazeera — “Time ‘running out’ to reach Yemen’s Taiz amid deepening crisis, UN says”. Note: the key figures in this story come from UN agencies; battlefield claims from either side could not be independently verified.
